The Vermont Lung Center is a consortium of public and private health organizations working in a collaborative venture to improve understanding, prevention and management of respiratory disease. The goal of the Center is to translate knowledge into application through programs designed to modify the skills, attitudes and behavior of health professionals, patients and the general public. Research and demonstration projects involving critically focused investigative and educational programs are the basic mechanisms employed. Since this translation process is poorly understood and effective tools remain to be developed, process and outcome evaluation are intrinsic to the mission of the Center. The programs of the VLC are community-oriented; they are designed to assess the means whereby modern health and medical knowldge and modes of preventive or therapeutic intervention can be introduced into the community setting cost-effectively and efficiently utilizing local health professionals and interested citizens. The VLC is concerned with the primary prevention of pulmonary disease as exemplified by programs designed to reduce risk to the population as a whole; we are interested in secondary prevention whereby those with pulmonary disease are protected from the development of further complications; finally, we involve ourselves in the rehabilitation of the pulmonary cripple (tertiary prevention) so that quality of life is maximized and costs to society reduced.